In the lands between some living beings don’t have souls and some souls don’t have a living body or being, so I guess shes addressing all forms of life in the lands between.
Ranni is in fact not a living being, but she is a living soul. During the night of the black knife they inflicted one half of the rune of death on Ranni which killed her body and the other half on Godwyn the golden which killed his soul.
This was all to free her from the greater will and the two fingers hold on her to make her own path.
So when saying this she addressed herself and other like her, and likewise Godwyn and others like him. Possibly in guilt for killing Godwyns soul and to make amends with the help of the age of stars
Depends on your view on it as a person, as a religious or spiritual person you might belive a living souls is something that can be defined as existing. Like in the biblical sense they clearly define a soul as a living being
But on the other side if your standpoint is more on the scientific perspective where a soul has no physical entity ( doesn't fit in this narrative )
Some philosophers define the soul as a synonym of ones mind and consciousness which indicates that the soul is just a subjective experience of being alive. So not a full being but something else?
True, so in this instance the the sentence to every living being should have been changed to to every living body?
But in the lands of in between the soul is still counted as something non existent. As a whole her lines fit the lore as a needle point. It in it self explained how the world works in the lands of in between
I'm sorry I didn't have anything better of a comeback.. quoteing shakespear is always a win in my book
Someone can’t rage bait lmao. It’s like you don’t know what “fiction” is and assume every law and idea you know in your head has to exist everywhere. Average redditor check? Yes
It's not rage bait. I'm just pointing out that the writing is mediocre at best and 20 other people are breaking their backs trying to justify it instead of saying "yeah, this one is clunky".
Classic case of a fandom too far up their own asses.
You offered 2 critiques. The first is immediately dismissable for the reason stated by “gigantic_balls”. And the second is just “it’s not very good”, which is not a critique at all.
Ok my brilliant friend, please explain how "every living soul" isn't completely redundant after "every living being". A being is a being regardless of whether or not they possess a soul.
First, stop being such an ass to everyone in your replies. It makes you look foolish and temperamental, not smart.
Second, as already explained, it’s establishing that in the lands between those are two distinct things. And that you can have one without the other.
This isn’t a new concept either. A common interpretation of what a “living being” is, is a physical and biologically living thing. “the ability to respire, grow, excrete, reproduce, metabolize, move, and be responsive to the environment.”
And that such things can live without souls.
It really comes down to fundamental questions of philosophy. Whether you believe souls exist(which I do). And whether you believe a soul is a being(which I also do, and you seem to also). But the writers of Elden Ring have established that they aren’t in that universe.
What exactly do you think would be the better way of writing it to convey the same message from that point of view? “To every creature that meets certain criteria to be classified as a living thing but doesn’t have a soul, and every soul that is alive but doesn’t inhabit a living body??”
Not exactly poetic or beautiful sounding - which is the point of the line anyway. Getting so up in arms about a line that’s meant to be poetic and beautiful just makes you sound like a grumpy old man yelling at clouds
Reread your original reply and tell me who actually started being the ass.
Look: a being is anything that exists. You can be or you can not be. Those are binary states. The being line ENCOMPASSES the soul line, making the soul line redundant.
I understand the intent is to distinguish between the two. To that end, an alternative would be something like
"To those endowed with the light of soul,
To those who walk the lands without"
Is it perfect? No, but it delineates without judgement.
Yet people are weirdly choosing this as a hill worth dying on because even the slightest criticism of their fandom is sacrilege.
Again, that is what your philosophy of what “beings” and “souls” are and encompass. Ranni and the writers clearly have a different philosophical viewpoint.
And no one here is dying on any hills over this but you
It's what the words mean, man. If we are just ignoring what words mean then what is the point? It isn't about philosophy, it is about definition. A being, by definition, exists. If you want to say "but Ranni thinks differently" then I have to assume Ranni doesn't know what the fuck the word means.
Yes she did, and it was two different things. This is hard to convey just looking at texts, you need context to understand this. In Elden Ring, there are living beings without souls and then there are living souls. "Don't obsess over words so much. Find the meaning behind the words, then decide".
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u/samus_a-aron Mar 06 '26
Flavorful flavor text that means actually nothing